The guide provided by Scale 75 for their Steel set.
After covering the Azure Steel tutorial provided in the Steel NMM set, I wanted to have a go at the natural steel one. This was using some of the initial colours in the set to make a standard steel grey look for your metallics. I used the other side of the sword that I used in part one.
Much like in the initial review I was more than pleased with the results given. While I don’t think that the finished result looks like metal (I think that I had trouble with the placement of colour), I am absolutely confident that the set gives the painter the necessary pigments to be able to make perfect NMM steel. Here are some snaps.
The basecoat. A few thinned coats of SC3 – Graphite.
The first shadow layer. Thinned down SC4 Anthracite Grey
I got a little exited with my shadows and had to bring them back up with a little more SC3
The first highlight. SC2 – Nacar
The second highlight. A little white (SC1) added in to the SC2.
And FIN. with a lil more SC1 in there.
Now I know the blends are hardly the smoothest, but I was painting in a cafe and wanted to get home to my girl so we could watch Game Of Thrones together. While I’m confident that all of these colours can be found across the Vallejo range, If you need a handy guide, with the paints all in one spot, then you can do a lot worst than this set.
This brings the review of box one to an end. The two types of metals contained therein offer the painter the tools they need to be able to pull off this great, but ageing technique. But while it isn’t the most in-vogue of methods, I do think that it will age as well as Live At Buff Hall, and will be inspiring young painters for a good few generations the same way McVey’s two brush blending did with us when we were kids.
I’m excited to get in to the gold/copper set. I’m a lot more comfortable with my cold grey metals than I am with my warm yellows and browns, so I’m looking forward to see how I get on with them and feel that the reviews to come in part three and four will offer a lot more in terms of a learning curve.
These are great sets of paints – especially if you’re a newbie at NMM.
I’ve just had my first go with with the Gold set (following the Scale 75 video on YouTube) and it didn’t turn out too bad but I’m still wondering if I like it as much as ‘true’ metallic paint.
There’s an interesting article on CoolMini about adapting the NMM technique to metal paints which I think might be on to something. (I always used to shade my metal paints but not as much as you do with NMM; it’ll be worth trying out)